what do you think about the use of image stabilization when you take photographs of bird in flight?
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what do you think about the use of image stabilization when you take photographs of bird in flight?
Paolo- Birds in flight either hand-held or from a tripod requires moving the camera and lens to track the bird. This movement or panning will also have a random shake component which IS will help reduce, as will a high shutter speed. On Canon super-teles at least, there are two IS settings and number 2 is for panning situations. So I would say yes, absolutely, IS is a huge advantage when photographing birds in flight.
I'll add to John's emphatic yes. As you increase in focal length, above 300 mm, the magnification of small vibrations is quite large. If you have a camera with live view, try it out on a subject with a big telephoto without IS on. It is stunning how much the image is moving around. Then turn on IS, and wow! It really works. I use mode 1 (canon) whether hand held or on a tripod. I even use IS one when focusing with live view. Pretty much all the bird images on my web site (below) are with IS on. I'll turn it off only on very fast shutter speeds as I have found that above 1/2000 second sharpness can suffer (tested on my 300 f/4; I haven't seen that problem on my 500 f/4).
I don't own one IS lens and so far so good.... With the proper technique, you can create sharp images.
I use it pretty much religiously. Except the 100-400 when mounted to a tripod. In my tests I must agree with some other reports that the 100-400 suffers with I.S. use when on a tripod - at least with my version.
Not to hijack the thread, but it will be interesting as digital sensors evolve. I see a day, perhaps not too far in the future, that extreme high iso's are available with little to no noise. Imagine shooting at f2.8 or 5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/25,000" at ISO 51,200 or higher. There will be no point to having image stabilization at that point, that I can tell anyway. Couple this with extremely high resolution sensors (and LENSES!) where you can stay "somewhat" wide on your subject to keep it in the viewfinder while on uncertain terrain (just spent this past weekend on a small vessel photographing humpback whales & orca). Shoot and crop, then print a 40 x 60 with ease. Yes, I know that our current technology does not support this feature set, but lets see what digital photography/cinematography looks like in 5-10 years. Would we recognize it?
I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords.
:)
Paolo Turning it of will not make a significant difference. I own several IS lenses and have tried them each way. At the end you will probably forget to turn back on for still subjects..... would keep on !!!
Dave,Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Taylor
Not only does current technology not support such low noise, high ISO photography, it never will! The reason is physics. The noise you see in images from digital cameras is predominantly from photon noise, not noise in the electronics. Photons are finite. Even if the perfect sensor were created that captured every photon, the image would still be noisy because there really aren't that many photons to capture. The noise equals the square root of the number of photons. For an ISO 200 metered exposure on a gray card, about 1300 photons per square micron are delivered to the focal plane in green light. At ISO 2000 that's only 130 photons, and at ISO 20,000 it is only 13 photons. And the sensor captures only a fraction of those at present. The solution to high ISO performance is larger pixels (the real reason why the Nikon D3 does so well at low light--simple physics).
So when it's dark outside (or inside), it really is dark: few to no photons.
More information:
Does Pixel Size Matter
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...el.size.matter
Digital Camera Sensor Performance Summary
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...rmance.summary
I completely agree with your very articulately put statement Roger. However, what we KNOW to be true seems to be changing all the time. True, with our current technology, your physics is sound. But who knows what is just around the corner? Photons may be finite, but creativity/progress/need/desire are most certainly not. What we knew for a fact yesterday is now questioned today and may have a different answer tomorrow. "Rules" that were set 10 years ago, have been broken and re-broken again and again. I could be wrong, but I would still venture to say that photography in 10 years may be a totally different beast.
Who knows, maybe a new film will be developed in a year and we'll all switch to Kodachrome 25,000x or Fuji Velvia 51,200alpha.
I, for one, welcome our new creative overlords:)
Yes, one never knows when Star trek space time continuum breakthroughs will happen and will suck photons out of hyperspace. But real physics hasn't changed since the discovery of quantum mechanics, and even then there has never been a time in history where fundamental physical laws have been broken. I'll bet in 10 years photon noise will still be the ultimate limit, and we are already there. Photon noise is a fundamental limit that is well predicted by physics. Digital cameras are not some new technology; they've been in development for over 30 years (I used my first digital camera in 1976). It is a mature technology but what is new is the refinement bringing what was possible in laboratories 20+ years ago to the consumer. This is cool: every image you acquire with your digital camera is an experiment with quantum physics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Taylor
What is likely to improve soon is increasing the quantum efficiency of the sensors, currently around 30 to 40%, to above 90%. So we can expect an improvement of 2 to 3x in ISO. The technology to do this exists and has for several decades. It's called thinned-back-side illuminated sensors. But no one has made a way to mass produce the chips. They must be custom made, which means expensive. I've expected one of the camera makers to come out with a model with such a sensor in the top pro line, but it would probably cost well above $10K.
